Boubyan’s UTap tech­nol­ogy avail­able for cus­tomers

Ser­vice at all Boubyan ATMs and POS ma­chines: For first time in GCC

Once again, Boubyan Bank em­pha­sizes its lead­er­ship in the digital bank­ing mar­ket by launch­ing the UTap tech­nol­ogy across all ser­vice lev­els, whether through ATMs or P.O.S. ma­chines at stores and show­rooms, for the first time across the GCC banks. The tech­nol­ogy is known in­ter­na­tion­ally as (Near Field Com­mu­ni­ca­tion “NFC”) where a cus­tomer waves his bank­ing card near the P.O.S. ma­chine or the ATM, which will iden­tify all the in­for­ma­tion and process the pay­ment/with­drawal trans­ac­tion within sec­onds by tap­ping the card on the ATM/P.O.S. ma­chine and en­ter­ing the PIN.

Ab­dulla Al-Na­jran Al-Tuwai­jri, Deputy Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, stated: “Cur­rently, all the bank’s cards are equipped with this tech­nol­ogy, mak­ing it eas­ier to use them. It is suf­fi­cient to wave the card near the P.O.S. ma­chine or the ATM in or­der to iden­tify the card’s data and in­for­ma­tion in a se­cure and en­crypted man­ner af­ter en­ter­ing the PIN and then the debit or with­drawal trans­ac­tion is com­pleted. This way is eas­ier com­pared with the cur­rent method where the card is in­serted into the P.O.S./ATM in or­der to read the data through the smart chip.”

Speak­ing of the most sig­nif­i­cant ad­van­tages of the ser­vice, Al-Tuwai­jri added: “It is eas­ier in terms of use and you may ac­cess your in­for­ma­tion and com­plete your debit trans­ac­tions swiftly. Fur­ther­more, the ser­vice main­tains the high­est se­cu­rity stan­dards, and one can imag­ine the speed and flex­i­bil­ity this pay­ment method will add to our daily life in ad­di­tion to the var­i­ous ways where we can ben­e­fit from such a sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment.”

Khalid Al-Sham­miri, Boubyan Bank’s Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ager - Di­rect Bank­ing Chan­nels, said that in ad­di­tion to the ease of use those new cards en­joyed, the new cards en­joyed the high­est ap­proved se­cu­rity stan­dards in ad­di­tion to main­tain­ing the con­fi­den­tial­ity of in­for­ma­tion.

Al-Sham­miri added: “This type of tech­nol­ogy is now com­monly used in a num­ber of coun­tries around the globe. How­ever, in Boubyan Bank we take pride that our cus­tomer are not only the first to ben­e­fit from such a tech­nol­ogy in Kuwait but also the first to do so across the GCC re­gion. Our cards are the only GCC cards to use such a tech­nol­ogy for both ATMs & P.O.S. ma­chines.” Boubyan Bank cus­tomers may now re­place their ex­ist­ing cards, bank­ing or credit cards, with the new ones from any branch with­out any ad­di­tional fees. Mean­while, all new cards will be equipped with such a tech­nol­ogy.

K-net, NCR & Boubyan Bank Con­tin­u­ous Co­op­er­a­tion

Al-Tuwai­jri ex­tended his thanks to the Shared Elec­tronic Bank­ing Ser­vices Com­pany (K-net) stat­ing that such a step made by Boubyan Bank in co­op­er­a­tion with K-net rep­re­sented a qual­i­ta­tive leap in the state of Kuwait in terms of us­ing both the ATMs & P.O.S. ma­chines due to the speed of use pro­vided by the ser­vice as well as sav­ing time and ef­fort in ad­di­tion to en­joy­ing the high­est se­cu­rity stan­dards. “K-net is sav­ing no ef­fort in co­op­er­at­ing with lo­cal banks to pro­vide the lo­cal mar­ket with ad­vanced ser­vices and prod­ucts which put Kuwaiti banks in the lead­er­ship po­si­tion on the GCC level.”, he added. AlTuwai­jri also thanked NCR, the in­ter­na­tional com­pany, for the ser­vices it pro­vided to the Kuwaiti mar­ket. In this con­text, Hos­sam Zahda, Gen­eral Man­ager of NCR’s Kuwait Of­fice, stated: “By co­op­er­at­ing with NCR, Boubyan’s in­volve­ment in digital bank­ing ser­vices will have a pos­i­tive ef­fect on the bank’s cus­tomers who will feel the dif­fer­ence with time, es­pe­cially that such ser­vices save a lot of time and ef­fort.”

Zahda went on to praise the co­op­er­a­tion with Boubyan Bank dur­ing the past years, adding: “Such a co­op­er­a­tion re­sulted in a num­ber of re­mark­able bank­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices dis­tin­guished by their high tech­nol­ogy. The bank’s cus­tomers al­ways ben­e­fit­ted greatly from such ser­vices, es­pe­cially the new one launched by Boubyan Bank in co­op­er­a­tion with NCR for the first time across the GCC re­gion.”

The World’s Best Is­lamic Digital Bank

On the other hand, Al-Tuwai­jri dwelt on Boubyan Bank’s re­ceipt of the World’s Best Is­lamic Digital Bank Award for the se­cond year in a row from the Global Fi­nance Mag­a­zine in ad­di­tion to be­ing named the Best Is­lamic Digital Bank in Kuwait. The Global Fi­nance Mag­a­zine named the in­ter­na­tional win­ning banks where CitiBank re­ceived the World’s Best Cor­po­rate/In­sti­tu­tional Digital Bank Award and Stan­dard Char­tered re­ceived the World’s Best Con­sumer Digital Bank Award while Boubyan Bank was crowned as the World’s Best Is­lamic Digital Bank.